As Mr Tim Worstall, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, argued this week, the relationship between what the royal family ostensibly owns and how the income from those holdings is distributed and taxed is fiendishly complicated. But the narrow truth is that the Crown Estate, which belongs to the monarch, pays its profit to the Treasury. In the most recent accounts, that was worth more than £304 million; in the past decade, the estate has handed over £2.4 billion. As Mr Worstall says: The important point to grasp is that Buckingham Palace does not belong to Mrs E. Windsor, it belongs to the monarch. The Crown Estate does not belong to Mrs E. Windsor, it belongs to the monarch. And the profits on one part of the monarch’s estate are being used to pay for the upkeep of another part of the monarch’s estate. That is, the Crown is already paying for these repairs to Buckingham Palace. Which is what makes demands that the Crown, or its estate, should pay for the repairs to Buckingham Palace so damn ignorant.
It’s actually a reprint of something from Bloomberg.
And I know this is trivial and so on, but I really do still get a kick out of this.
I know why I wrote that piece, it was just looking around for something to scribble to earn the 200 crisp ones that I’ll get paid for it. And now it turns up in the fish wrapper in Singapore. Yes, it’s trivial, there’s a childish glee to this. But that glee is there. I still find it difficult to really get my head around it all.
Oh, and one more point. So, some bloke in the Czech Republic scribbles something, up onto this telegraphic contrivance, and a day later there’re snippets and quotations being fed to millions around the world?
And we’re in a time of technological stagnation, are we?
Yes, it’s trivial, there’s a childish glee to this.
It is not trivial. At base we are creatures who have evolved to spread our genes. Or bang hot babes as a pretty near traditional approximation. Hot babes like people in the media – as President-elect Trump has pointed out I believe. Thus you have become famous in South East Asia and so increased your chances of meeting some Singaporean chicks.
Or rather, because Christianity mediates and moderates our base animal desires, you have become famous in South East Asia and so have greatly increased your chance of being recognised, liked, invited to various conferences and the like by people in Singapore.
That is no small benefit. Even ignoring the hot Singaporean babes.
Never mind about the internet, I still can’t quite get over the magic of word-processing. I used to write on a manual typewriter and bloody hard work it was too. When you neared the bottom of a page you used to dread making a mistake; then there was the horror of Tippex, both as liquid and in the form of those nasty little strips that you’d type over; then the ribbons kept getting fainter and fainter and to change one your fingers got filthy; and I won’t even start on complaining about carbon paper, or the fact that agents and publishers would hang on to your manuscript for months before vouchsafing an opinion — which meant that you needed to type the whole thing out again if in the mean time you wanted to submit it elsewhere.
All this is made redundant by even the crappiest Chromebook available today — hell, even an Android tablet with or without a bluetooth keyboard. Hooray for everyone involved!
“So, some bloke in the Czech Republic scribbles something, up onto this telegraphic contrivance, and a day later there’re snippets and quotations being fed to millions around the world?”
Not that different to what foreign correspondents were doing in the 1930’s, though.
‘a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London’
That’s like a guy hanging around there? Maybe someday you’ll be a Fellow.
“the Crown Estate, which belongs to the monarch”: no, really, it doesn’t, whatever a few spin doctors might say. Her property rights in it were nil for a couple of centuries, now she gets 15% of the income from it with which to fund her largely ceremonial role. No doubt that arrangement will be altered again in a few decades time.
If parliament were decide to sell off half of it tomorrow, then half would be sold. It’s parliament that has the property rights, not the monarch.
What I don’t know is which properties Her Majesty herself owns, as distinct from those which are in trusts of which she is a beneficiary. Does anyone know: is it public knowledge?
Belongs to the Monarch, that is belongs to the Crown, it is not personal property of whoever happen to reign for the time being, but neither is it the same as the Government’s property. Which is why there is a Crown Estate, that pays 85% of its income to the Goverment.
Dearieme,
Yes, it is public information. I’m not sure it is quite “public knowledge” though.
Yes, the Straits Times does like a good minor story to show how well things are going here by comparison. I can try and dig out a physical copy iy you haven’t got one.
Thanks v much but don’t worry. If I’d actually written for them for the first time then that would be different…..